swarm in house

[Eugene Willson]

Hi,
Someone's hive swarmed and found a small hole in a corner of my siding. I had my garage door opened  the night before and noticed a couple dozen bees checking it out in the early evening, I did not think much of it as I store empty hives and frames there.
In any case the next morning at 9 am I have a swarm fly in.  I get suited up and find they have gone in the hole in the bottom of the siding outside the house and garage. still have bees all over but no queen so I smoke the heck out of the hole. bees are now all over the garage
and some inside the house. I  smoke them all out and find the queen on the ground dead (I must have stepped on her) I put her in a box and all the bees go in. so I put a frame of brood and eggs in with them and took the dead queen out that night. All is well and the bees are working like mad. One week later I have 5 queen cells and 3 full med frames of nectar and pollen.
So if you happen to kill a queen in a swarm try this it worked great.
Gene

[tjc1]

Quick thinking!

[BeeMaster2]

What did you do with dead queen?
If you are in this situation again, save her and put her in a small jar of alcohol and use the alcohol for swarm traps.
Jim

[mtnb]

Wow. That's pretty cool and good thinking.

[GSF]

What a way to recover!

[Eugene Willson]

Hi,
I did put the queen in alcohol with a few others that I saved from other hives, the new queens are due to hatch out Wed or Thur, I am going to cage them on the comb and save them too. with any luck.
 I  made some cages with hardware screen with double sides so they will be contained. if it doesnt work I have three spare queens in 3 frame nuc colonies. I lost one when I tried to introduce her to the new swarm, most likely to fast, live and learn lol.
Gene